Fun with a dental camera

It was only a few weeks ago that I vowed never to try using a vintage camera again. But then I bought this new one and I couldn’t resist it. It’s called a Yashica Dental-Eye camera, and here’s a picture of it.

The Dental-Eye is actually a Yashica FX-3, which was sold for dentists and opticians to photograph teeth and eyes in 1:1 close-up. The camera has a fixed 55mm f/4 lens, surrounded by a ringflash, which incorporates a small modelling lamp in the shape of a torch bulb. The batteries to run it all are in a compartment on the bottom of the body, which looks like a motor drive, but isn’t. The only control is a dial where you would normally expect the shutter speed dial to be. On this you set the film speed. Then you turn on the flash with a switch on the back of the camera and the modelling light with a switch on the front, and you’re ready to shoot.

What appears to be the focusing ring around the lens is actually a control to vary the magnification from 1:1 to 1:10. You focus by simply moving the camera back and forth in front of the subject, and because the light is supplied by flash, there’s no worry about camera shake at such close distances. I haven't shot any teeth or eyeballs, but had great fun wandering around the garden with it.

Below are a couple of pictures I took with this weird camera. Incidentally, having been dedicated to digital photography for a few years now, I was horrified to find I had to pay over a fiver for the film and the same again to have it processed, and I didn’t even have any prints made from it! I just scanned the negatives so that I could get digital images you see here.